This project aims to study the action of the employers in the sport structuration on a national scale between 1880 and 1980. With regard to the emergence of sport in France, historiography has mainly explored the role played by the leaders of sports organizations (clubs, federations etc.). But the action of entrepreneurs is much less known. However, as in Roubaix with the industrialists Théodore Vienne and Eugène Motte, in Sochaux with Peugeot or in Le Creusot with the Schneider family, many of the employers participated in the organization of the sport. Thus, by focusing on the role and action of these men (it seems that there are no women), this project aims to renew the analysis of the emergence and development of sport. This being said, this project plans to question the plural foundations of these employer investments, it tries to illuminates the reasons for which a particular employer invests in sport and thus whishes to better understand the expression « paternalisme sportif » (sport paternalism), and the supervision of the working classes which is its corollary. Similarly, some employers taking advantage by a high visibility, this project leads to question the forms of recognition brought by the use of sport. So many questions, at the crossroads of the history of sport and social, economic and political history, asked in the context of the historiography of the employers. Indeed, the latter has clearly emphasized the full extent of the category "employers", a category that cannot be summed up in the best known entrepreneurs, Forcing us to study the trajectories of less visible individuals and to complicate the analysis of their various investments. Therefore, by questioning the action of the various French employers with regard to sport, this project intends to propose a new reading of the rise and structuring of this cultural phenomenon that is sport while bringing a fresh look on the employers' world.